Open Call for Artists

The Next 50: A Bay Area Textile Open

A 50th Anniversary Exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles

In 2027, the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles will celebrate its 50th anniversary. Since our founding in 1977, the Museum has championed fiber, cloth, thread, quilt, and textile-based practices as vital forms of contemporary art. At a time when many textile traditions were still being placed outside the boundaries of fine art, the museum helped make space for artists working through material, pattern, structure, stitch, surface, and process.

To mark this milestone, the Museum invites artists from across the wider Bay Area to submit work for The Next 50: A Bay Area Textile Open, a juried open call exhibition celebrating the breadth, innovation, and vitality of textile art today.

This exhibition looks at the present as a way of imagining the future. What is happening in textile art now? What forms, ideas, materials, traditions, and experiments are shaping the next 50 years? How are artists using textile practices to think about joy, resilience, identity, place, community, resistance, beauty, labor, memory, and transformation?

The Next 50 asks artists to help chart where textile art is going by showing us what it is becoming now.

Theme: Joy, Innovation, and the Next Fifty Years

As the Museum reflects on five decades of textile history, we are interested in work that helps us imagine what comes next.

Joy will serve as one lens for this exhibition, but not as a simple or sentimental theme. Joy can be complex, hard-won, defiant, intimate, political, communal, or deeply personal. It can emerge through making, repair, memory, experimentation, inheritance, beauty, or acts of care.

Artists are invited to submit work that considers textile art as a field of possibility. We welcome works that ask:

What does textile art make possible now?

How do fiber practices carry history while inventing new futures?

How can textiles communicate the transformative potential of joy, care, beauty, and resilience?

What can material knowledge tell us about the future of art?

We are especially interested in work that reflects the range of textile-based practices happening across the Bay Area today, from traditional forms to experimental approaches.

Eligibility

This call is open to artists living in the Bay Area and surrounding region, including:

San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Solano, Sonoma, Santa Cruz, and San Benito counties.

Artists at all career stages are welcome. We encourage submissions from artists working in traditional, contemporary, experimental, community-based, and interdisciplinary textile practices.

Media

This is a textile-centered open call. Eligible work may include, but is not limited to:

Quilting
Weaving
Knitting
Crochet
Embroidery
Felting
Surface design
Basketry
Textile collage
Soft sculpture
Beadwork or embellishment
Wearable or garment-based textile work
Fiber installation
Mixed-media work in which textile, fiber, cloth, thread, stitch, or textile structure is a primary component

Artists are encouraged to interpret “textile” broadly, while maintaining a clear material, conceptual, or process-based relationship to textile practice.

Artwork Requirements

Artists may submit up to two works for consideration.

Wall-mounted work may not exceed:

60 inches high × 60 inches wide × 12 inches deep

Freestanding work may not exceed:

36 inch width x 36 inch length x 10 feet height

Ceiling-hung work will be considered. Please list the weight of the piece in submission.

Works with complex installation requirements will be considered, but accepted artists must be available to assist with or advise on complicated installations as needed.

Electronic components may be considered on a case-by-case basis, but artists must provide all necessary equipment and installation support.

Additional requirements:

Work must be ready to install.

Quilts should have a 4 inch wide sleeve sewn to the back along top edge.
Youtube tutorial on adding a sleeve can be found here.
Mounted or framed work should have hardware for hanging such as a cleat or picture wire.
Instructions for hanging should be included with each piece

Fragile work will be considered.
No food, organic matter, wet materials, or unstable materials.
Artists are responsible for delivery and pick-up of accepted work.
Shipped work will be accepted, but artists are responsible for all shipping costs, packing, and return shipping arrangements.
Accepted artists will be required to sign a loan agreement.
Work will be insured while on view at the Museum.
Work not delivered on time will be cut from the show at the curators discretion.

Sales

Works in this exhibition will not be offered for sale through the museum.

Entry Fee

There is no entry fee to submit.

The Museum is committed to making this opportunity accessible to artists across the region.

Juried Selection

This exhibition will be selected by a jury with expertise in textile art, fiber practice, craft, contemporary art, and/or curatorial work.

The jury will consider:

Artistic strength
Strength of craftsmanship
Relationship to the exhibition theme
Material, technical, or conceptual engagement with textile practice
Contribution to the breadth and diversity of the exhibition
Installation feasibility within the museum space

The final exhibition will aim to represent a wide range of textile practices, materials, voices, and approaches from across the Bay Area.

Submission Materials

Artists should submit the following through the below form:

Artist name and contact information
County of residence
Short artist bio, 100 words or less
Up to two artworks for consideration
Images of each submitted work (700 px x 1000px)
Title, year, dimensions, materials, and installation requirements for each work
A brief artist statement, 150 words or less, describing the work or how the submitted work relates to the exhibition theme
Confirmation that the artist can deliver, ship, and retrieve work according to the exhibition schedule
Agreement that images of accepted work may be used by the Museum for exhibition-related promotion, press, social media, website, and archival purposes

Key Dates

Submission deadline: January 1st, 2027
Jury review: January
Notification of acceptance: February 8th
Artwork delivery/shipping window: Dates in March TBA
Exhibition dates: April 2027
Opening reception: TBA
Artwork pick-up/return shipping window: TBA